Re: Text vs binary - eol-style, mime-type, allow merging, etc.

Aleksey Nogin wrote:
> Well, my proposal would be to allow users to explicitly override
> subversion defaults in case they hit one of those "corner cases".
> Basically, I would propose adding two new properties:
>
> svn:allow-diff
> svn:allow-merge
[...]

I'm sorry to have to tell you that that is a classic mistake. Just adding more
options and features to cover up the flaws in the existing design is not a good
way to proceed.

We need to analyse the existing situation and tackle the subject as a whole:
improve the orthogonality of these options (eol-style, keywords, diff/merge
behaviour), deprecate the indistinct notion of "binaryness" in favour of
something(s) more concrete, and not add any more switches/options/properties
than absolutely neccesary. And move in the direction of truly pluggable
diff/merge.

That said, we might first try to find and fix any existing corner cases that
reasonably can be fixed. ("Fixing corner cases" means making the behaviour
more consistent so that there are no odd exceptions to the way a particular
feature behaves.)